By William Ferrall

Last year Tom Scott winced at mention of recent articles published about him and his new company Plum TV. Maybe it was several writers’ clever descriptions of the long-time Nantucket resident that caused his discomfort. “A dreamer whose Trump-sized business vision is leavened by John Boy Walton hominess,” said The New York Times. “Wasp entrepreneur,” quipped Vanity Fair.

You might expect that Scott, who co-founded Nantucket Nectars in1989 with business partner Tom First, would have grown used to being in the spotlight. After all, Scott and First had already parlayed their rather casually-run floating convenience store and tender service called Nantucket Allserve—which served boats at anchorage in Nantucket Harbor—into a highly successful, multi-million dollar beverage company in partnership with Ocean Spray. They eventually sold Nantucket Nectars in 2002 to Cadbury-Schweppes for an undisclosed price that the Wall Street Journal estimated to be an attention-grabbing $100 million. Even today the two continue to put a folksy public face on the product as the company spokesmen, “Tom and Tom, the Juice Guys.”

Scott’s launch of Plum TV, which started here on Nantucket after his purchase in 2002 of Nantucket Television Channel 22, has presented him with a host of challenges he never faced in the beverage business. Now, with worries over signal strengths, programming at 3 a.m. and audience shares, Scott has shifted from chagrin with the press to concerns with overseeing the far-flung Plum TV Network. “On television it never stops,” he said. “It’s a twenty-four seven business.”

By March of this year, after expanding from Nantucket into four other prominent resorts and making it publicly clear that Plum TV will continue growing full-tilt, Scott conceded, “Last year was particularly challenging. It was like a dream.”

From the start, Scott assembled an able and impressive group of colleagues, whom he calls “a great group of friends,” to push Plum TV forward. As one of the original investors in NTV-22, Scott saw in early 2002—around the time the Nectars sale was wrapping up—that the fledgling station needed a boost in working capital to succeed. “When Gene [ Mahon] and Alan [Hall] started it, I thought it was an interesting idea,” recalled Scott. “I was going to put a pretty significant amount of money into it. It [eventually] became one of those situations where we could all sort of participate pro-rata, or I could buy people out.”

Scott soon acquired most of the other investors’ shares in NTV, putting the deal together with the help of his long-time friend and New York City lawyer David Kuhn. “I called Dave when I was in Europe and said, ‘I have to buy this.’ He’s a lawyer, so I said, ‘Can you do this, and would you like to come run it?’”

Kuhn, who has visited Nantucket for 20 years, jumped at the chance. “It is a magical island with caring people and a loyal community,” he said. “I’d like to have Plum provide a stage for the community as best we can.”

Since Kuhn came on board in Nantucket, Scott has called other friends and acquaintances to join him in what has been a new frontier in network television. Although the Resort Sports Network offers regular programming feeds to cable systems around the country, it focuses almost entirely on weather and sports conditions in popular outdoor venues. Scott wanted to differentiate Plum TV by more fully embracing the full array of community issues in towns where they acquired stations.

Kuhn has spearheaded most of the Plum acquisitions, which so far include stations in Martha’s Vineyard, the Hamptons, Aspen and Vail, in addition to Nantucket. Cary Woods, a former Miramax Films producer and ex-husband of Scott’s wife Emily (Woods actually introduced his ex-wifeto Scott), joined Plum as Chief Creative Officer and co-Chairman. Completing the early management team, Nantucket native and former vice president for corporate strategy at CNBC Television, joined Plum as its President. Financial and marketing officers have since joined the group.

Glowacki, a 1985 graduate of Nantucket High School, said that finding the right talent is one of Plum’s biggest challenges, because Plum wants people “who are uniquely sensitive to the differences and similarities in these markets.” He, Scott and the other Plum co-founders “fully understand what makes these places so special,” Glowacki noted.

After just two years, Plum has produced or acquired enough original programming to fill many of its daily hours. Shared programming among the stations includes independent films, a cartoon series and a children’s reading hour. Plum TV’s signature “Morning Show,” a locally produced and programmed news and entertainment segment, now airs at each Plum station. A 24-hour “ticker tape” crawl across the bottom of the television screen offers Plum-generated news updates and weather forecasts to viewers—a service that will soon originate in part from Plum’s planned new corporate headquarters in Manhattan, which will also house company executive and marketing offices.

The rapid growth has taken Scott on whirlwind trips around the country, many in the Pilatus plane he pilots himself. Nantucket Times editor Bill Ferrall caught up with him last month at Plum’s current headquarters and studio located in an industrial complex near the East Hampton, New York, airport. Scott shared what inspired his latest venture and how it’s progressing.

The Plum TV Network has grown fast since you took over Nantucket’s Channel 22 two years ago. What were you thinking when you took over the Nantucket station?

I thought it was an interesting idea: here’s this fun place, with great people who visit in the summer and are just an extension of the community. It’s a really interesting mix.

When I was a kid, I thought people who lived on Nantucket were the coolest thing in the world. They were in their boats; they were fishing and doing all those things you dream of. I don’t think I’m alone: It’s easy to forget when you live in a place like that. The carpenters, servicemen and all that kind of stuff—to the visitors, it’s very romantic. I grew up in D.C., in a landlocked area without the natural beauty.

As one of the original investors when it was NTV, I knew the business needed more money. I was in South Africa [at the time], but I made an offer to everybody [who had invested in NTV].

Right after doing the deal, I went on a Yoga retreat. [There] I met a native of the Vineyard and a native of the Hamptons, who coincidentally were on the trip. We got to talk: housing, preservation, the changing life style, and teachers being unable to find affordable housing. It was all the same thing, and it was just amazing to me. These places don’t only have in common the demographic, [but] they have in common the entire lifestyle, the issues and the seasonality. People do one thing in the summer, another thing in the fall and another thing in the winter. There’s this cyclical economy that takes place.

How would you describe the markets for Plum TV? What’s the pitch to advertisers?

Most advertisers on a national level are attracted to the people who visit these places. One of our strategies has been to work with brands that share a common aesthetic.

We went hard after Volkswagen because by and large, we like the brand; it appeals to everyone in our market. By and large we do exclusives [with national advertisers]. They mostly want to speak to the summer people. Some local advertisers want to speak to the summer people, some want to speak to the local people.

The pitch is, ‘We’re local content.’ One of the things that we offer—at Nantucket Nectars we really came to learn this—is that when people are on vacation, they’ll try something they wouldn’t try otherwise. They’ll start a new exercise regimen, start a new diet, they’ll read books, they’ll make major purchasing decisions. The way that people think on vacation is just different.

Don’t people want reminders of home when they’re on vacation?

We just acquired the Aspen station last year, and they have twelve years of Nielsen’s. A lot of data. We did Nielsen’s last year in three markets. The opposite is true.

It’s one of those things. When I would go skiing, I would always watch [local television]. You know, ‘What’s this town all about?’ In D.C., all you hear about is federal politics, and you don’t hear about anything going on locally. When I moved to Nantucket, it was the opposite: ‘When is the new stop sign going up?’ Nielsen has done their studies and RSN [Resort Sports Network] has done their studies. They see the same thing.

What goes into programming decisions? Your local stations do their individual morning shows. Isn’t there one in every place now?

Yes. Our [initial] idea was that we had to do a live morning show. That’s really what this should be about. Anything that grew off that, we’d allow to grow. We took time during this off-season to create some uniformity, taking everything we’ve learned from each other to see what works and what doesn’t.

We quickly thought that the best way for this to work was to bring some kind of synergy to the table and make it a network. It was a dream to have the critical mass to make fun and interesting programming. But to have just one channel—and to try all that with just one channel—wasn’t going to work. Look at the people we have working with us now. There’s no way we could afford those people on one channel. Now we can do deals for content that already exists. We can also make our own content, graphics, the ticker and all that kind of stuff.

Dan [ Honan, producer at the Nantucket station] just made a great piece on scalloping. We look at a piece like that and say, ‘Does anyone else care about this besides Nantucket?’ The Vineyard would care. They’d care here [in the Hamptons].

Then we have what we call national programming. We share all that. So there will be a little more uniformity in this coming year. Beyond some basics, our conclusion is let the place be the best guest every day. When we were in town [on Nantucket], a dog would wander through the set. Delivery trucks would drive by. We like that. If they want the town manager or the selectman, that’s their call.

I’m trying to get a sense of how the company operates on a day-to-day basis. What are the ongoing challenges?

If you look at our technology and what a major television network would use, it’s big money. It’s a huge gulf. Let’s be honest. We don’t get the most respect in the world. When we call Comcast, we’re not going to get the same response NBC gets when they have a problem. And we know that. But we’re always working on that. I hope you’ll see the signal getting better and better.

We get together weekly and talk about everything we’re talking about here. Jage [Toba, Director of Network Programming for Plum] describes it as a dream factory. We’ll get together and say, ‘What about this idea, what about that idea?’ One of the things about television is the millions of submissions. They come in droves and you wade through them.

We get hundreds of applications—kids in college, not in college, not kids, anybody—who can edit, want to try it. We use what we call predators, which means you write, you edit, you do the whole thing. You’re a story-teller.

I’ve learned it’s much better to find passionate people who are dying to do something that you see eye-to-eye with, then let them do it. If there’s not somebody who’s really dying to do it, who has an idea for it and who has a vision for it, then it’s probably not going to happen.

What’s your guiding philosophy and particular strength as company leader? How is this different from Nantucket Nectars?

There are three kinds of energy: break-even, negative, or positive. And you can put little pieces of positive energy into everything you do.

That’s been my thing: Helping the team work together and putting things in place to make it easier and more positive. [Also] the willingness to make mistakes. That runs counter to most things, but in an entrepreneurial situation, I say, ‘Go make mistakes, get out there and try it. See what happens.’ That’s my style, I guess.

It’s a very different thing for me here than at Nantucket Nectars. There no one knew anything about beverages at all. Our truck driver became our head of marketing, and it grew organically like that. In this case, we started with a lot of accomplished people with a lot of different skills. It was like Nantucket Nectars on steroids. Specialization within the team started right from the get-go.

Are you financially happy with what’s happening so far?

Yeah, I am. I’d be crazy not to be afraid, but I’m pleased with where we’ve gotten. And I’m optimistic. This will be the second season of Plum. Last year was particularly challenging: it went from programming to graphics to sales. At Nantucket Nectars, you knew that you had to make a product: a cap, label, bottle and something to put in it. On television, it never stops.

You’ve got to do it all with some kind of financial discipline. Day-to-day, buy low and sell high. My job is to make sure that those levels of discipline meet the levels of creativity. You’ve got to know where you are everyday.

By Pamela Mieth

How do you get from 16th-century Mexico to modern-day Prague? One road leads through Nantucket, with the vehicle being a world premiere opera.

“La Conquista,” a new opera with so many international connections it should carry a passport, was commissioned in 2001 by Prague’s National Theatre, where its gala world premiere was held March 12. With the 16th–century Spanish conquest of Mexico as its subject, the opera was composed by world-renowned Italian composer Lorenzo Ferrero and directed by Nicholas Muni of the Cincinnatti Opera. Its Nantucket link is its co-librettist and island resident Frances Karttunen.

Karttunen, a native Nantucketer who returned to the island to retire after a distinguished academic career, is a linguist who specializes in Classical Nahuatl, the language spoken by 16th-century Aztecs. Karttunen helped Ferrero create arias for the opera in languages appropriate to the time period and characters. Ferrero turned to Karttunen for help because he had been using her book “An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl” during the early development of “La Conquista.”

He tracked her down online through the University of Texas at Austin, from which she retired in 2000 and where her professional specialty was ethno-history and indigenous languages of Latin America.

“The opera project came out of the blue,” recalled Karttunen, who lives with her husband, environmental historian and author Alfred Crosby, in a historic downtown Nantucket home.

Linguistic authenticity

“I was impressed by how much homework Lorenzo had done before he contacted me, and even more impressed that he didn’t just want a pronunciation coach for the singers,” Karttunen said. “He wanted a transcription to use as he composed the music for the Aztecs, so that the music actually fit the speech patterns of Nahuatl rhetoric. In other words, the Nahuatl texts aren’t stretched and squeezed to fit into European musical conventions.”

Ferrero sent Karttunen a CD of the musical themes he planned to use in the opera and asked if she could produce a transcription of some Nahuatl texts he had chosen based on their Spanish translations. She in turn suggested additional texts that might interest him, beginning a two-year collaboration that led to her work as co-librettist. Despite a working relationship that often demanded daily e-mail correspondence, the pair met for the first time this year before the premiere in the Czech Republic capital.

After Ferrero mailed his finished score to Karttunen, she asked composer Richard Busch, then music director at St. Paul’s Church on Nantucket, to play it for her on the piano. Busch even sang along with part of it, which was “generous of him and great fun,” Karttunen said. Last fall she made a recording for the Czech singers in which she spoke all the Nahuatl in the libretto. The first time she heard it performed, though, was in Prague.

Although the conductor took care in getting the language strictly correct, the opera’s creators took some historical liberties in its dramatization. The audience’s guide to the action is Marina, a blend of a modern “pop-rock singer” who dreams of the events, and the real life Doña Marina, a Nahuatl-speaking woman who was Cortes’ translator and about whom Karttunen had written. “While the Spaniards are singing in Spanish and the Aztecs are singing in Nahuatl, she sings directly to the audience about what is going on,” Karttunen said. In Prague, a projection screen also flashed their words in Czech and English translations.

“Lorenzo was willing to have her sing in Czech, but the director [chose] to have her sing in English,” Karttunen said. “Yet another example of linguistic imperialism,” she added with her characteristic wit.

Ferrero said he believed the National Theatre chose the work in part because “the theme of cultural identity is deeply felt” by the Czech Republic and other former Eastern Bloc countries as they move to join the European Union. “With the integration of the countries of Europe, they want to keep their own values,” he explained.

A living language

While the Nahuatl culture eventually faded, the language, Karttunen noted, is still very much alive. “There is a large body of alphabetically written Nahuatl from the 16th-century, and the language is spoken by about a million people in Mexico today,” she said. “It is definitely not a dead language. The relationship of the 16th-century language with the way it is spoken today is comparable to the relationship between Shakespeare’s English and modern English.”

At the premiere, Karttunen shared a curtain call with Ferrero before the packed opera house, capping a week of premiere-related activities for Karttunen, including her lecture on Doña Marina’s changing image, a press conference, dinner with the ambassadors of Mexico, Italy, Spain and Peru and tea with administrators of the Italian Culture Institute and the Nâprstek Museum of Asian, African and American Cultures. She and Crosby also fit in as much sightseeing of historic Prague as possible.

“La Conquista” is slated for additional performances in Prague this spring. Producers in Finland, Germany, France, Latvia and Mexico have expressed interest in staging it. A potential U.S. producer has not yet emerged.

Karttunen, a dedicated birder and activist in several Nantucket community groups, will soon celebrate the publication of her latest book, “The Other Islanders: People Who Pulled Nantucket’s Oars,” due out in July.

By Amy Jenness

This summer you might notice that your chowder takes longer to arrive or that the landscapers aren’t cutting the lawn as frequently as they once did. That’s because many of the foreign faces we’ve come to rely on for seasonal service jobs won’t be here this year.

After almost two decades of recruiting workers from all over the world, Nantucket employers are struggling to fill jobs. Access to foreign laborers dried up this winter when the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services stopped issuing visas for seasonal workers.

Of course, Nantucket has adjusted to labor force shifts since the whaling boom years in the 1830s and 1840s. Whether it’s 1845 or 2005, the details may be different, but the immigrant story on Nantucket remains a central part of the island’s economic and cultural life.

By the mid-1800s, the ceaseless demand for labor created by Nantucket’s whaling industry attracted workers from all over the world, most notably from Ireland, the Cape Verde and Azorean Islands off the coast of Africa, as well as the South Pacific island nations of Hawaii, the Marquesas and the Sandwich Islands.

The confluence of different cultures on the tiny island had an impact, but compared to the wealth of the clannish Quaker sea captains who were building their mansions on Main Street, the effect of these new Nantucketers was quiet and small. It would be the children and grandchildren of these families who would rise through social classes, working for financial independence and pushing for social changes.

Island schools and churches became their centers. They kept to themselves, intent on succeeding through the universal immigrant experience of hard work and the drive to get ahead. They married, worked, built homes, had babies and settled in.

The Cape Verdeans, Azoreans and Irish who used to be “them” have become “us.” In this century, the newest generations of “them” travel here from around the world— Central America, South America, Europe, the South Pacific and Asia—not to mention the Caribbean. They come here to work both seasonally and year-round, still looking to get ahead, still driven to succeed.

An “elusive topic”

“It’s such an elusive topic,” said Father Joel Ives, Rector at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church on Fair Street and spiritual advisor to many in the island’s immigrant community. “The issues are always changing. You can’t really say that this is what it is, because tomorrow it may be completely different. But I will say that Nantucketers are extremely generous and welcoming, and it’s really nice to see the whole American Dream thing happening right here,” he said.

The jobs are mostly in construction, hospitality and service businesses. In the past 15 years especially, as the island’s tourist season has grown to nine months of the year, employers have looked around the world for much needed laborers.

As a result, the island is far more multi-cultural today than it was for much of the early 20th century, which makes it a more interesting place to live for Ives. “You can’t get a much whiter island than this one, and it cries out for diversity,” Ives pointed out.

But language and cultural differences also have put new burdens on island institutions and employers.

Take a look at Michelle Meckler’s English as a Second Language class for adults at the Nantucket Community School. On any given night there, you’ll see a sample of the broad cross-section of the world Nantucket hosts.

“We have anywhere from a hundred-twenty to a hundred-sixty students each semester, and they come from Bulgaria, Russia, Uzbekhistan, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Poland, Nepal, Thailand, Lithuania, El Salvador, Mexico, Peru, Jamaica and Slovakia, just to name a few,” Meckler said.

The 2000 US Census shows that 8% of Nantucket’s population is foreign-born, and 10.5% live in homes where the primary language spoken is one other than English. With about 700 living here year-round, Spanish-speaking people—mostly from El Salvador—make up the largest group of non-English-speaking homes.

“A lot of people never speak English here,” Meckler noted. “They live and work with members of their family or friends and perhaps they have to depend on those that they are with, but they can survive here and be completely isolated from the rest of what goes on around the island. It’s scary to venture out as an individual into a world where you don’t speak the language.”

Meckler praised her students for their motivation to attend class two nights a week and for their success in grasping the basic elements of English.“People come to class with a variety of patterns—some people have good conversational English and they are looking to progress in their job or in an academic way. For the people who come to us with no English, their greatest desire is to just survive here. They are trying to learn the rudiments of English so they can get by,” Meckler said.

Community nerve center

Ursula Nazareth’s Brazil Mini Mart, on the corner of Easton and South Water Streets, is both a touchstone and a nerve center for the Spanish and Caribbean communities on Nantucket. Spend a short while surveying the small store’s selection of foods from El Salvador, elaborate hair extensions favored by Jamaican women, frilly lingerie, hats, perfume, jewelry and beach towels, and you’ll quickly see that the Brazil Mini Mart is the neighborhood bodega, hang-out and resource center for Nantucket’s Spanish-speaking people.

The 24-year-old Nazareth has operated her store for three years, after coming to the United States five years ago from Brazil. She sells the foods and products of home to a largely Spanish-speaking clientele, although many others shop there. She will also will help customers get a mortgage, purchase airline tickets, wire money home or send a fax. All from behind the tiny counter in her store.

Nazareth seamlessly switches between Spanish and English while simultaneously handling paying customers, chatting with regulars and answering the constantly ringing telephone. Sometimes she translates between English and Spanish-speaking customers. Aside from running the store, Nazareth is also a paid medical interpreter. As a bridge between the island’s Spanish-speaking cultures and the rest of Nantucket, she takes her role seriously.

“When [Spanish-speaking] people come here from another country, they know they can trust us [she and her husband], because they know that everybody is in the same boat,” she said. Even if you have documentation, even if you have a green card, nobody wants to stand out too much. People are pretty shy about getting attention because they don’t want to get sent back.

Already part of a tight-knit community, her customers live within an even closer circle of family and friends who have come here from countries plagued by the effects of war, political upheaval, hurricanes and earthquakes—or they simply come in search of greater opportunity.

“We make the propaganda and then they come,” Nazareth says, shrugging her shoulders and laughing. “Whoever comes here first starts to work hard and make money. Then they bring their family here and then the families brings their friends.”

Despite help and encouragement from many community leaders, a few on Nantucket are wary of foreign ethnic newcomers. According to a report last March by the Nantucket Independent, Planning Board Chairman Don Visco objected to expanding the building that houses the Brazil Mini Mart, in part because he was troubled by traffic congestion created there by the “ethnic group” that visits the store. Visco told N Magazine that he was simply being descriptive in using the word “ethnic.”

“They could have been Irish or Portuguese,” said Visco. “But they’re stopping and jumping in and out of their cars, buying cigarettes and soda. It was the only way to describe the particular problem down there.”

Others have criticized the foreign-born newcomers for taking jobs away from Americans and for not paying taxes, but Chris Morris, manager of Arno’s Restaurant, said he and other island employers can’t get local people to apply for their jobs.

“It’s not like we rely on the visas to deny American citizens work. It’s not like we wouldn’t hire someone else to do the job. But Americans don’t want to leave their families for nine months of the year,” he said.

Seasonal opportunities

Although she is Eastern European, Histiana Grozeva’s story typifies the experience of many summer foreign workers. Grozeva, a 21-year-old student who will graduate with a degree in international economic relations this year, lives in Bulgaria’s capital city of Sophia. She heard about Nantucket from her boyfriend, who worked at Henry’s Sandwich Shop one summer and brought Grozeva back with him in 2003. That summer she worked at Henry’s and at Erica Wilson Needleworks.

“Working in the USA was a great experience for me, since I had the chance to improve my English, meet new friends and last but not least, I had the chance to earn some good money. It is more than impossible to earn this money with that type of job for one summer in Bulgaria. It is worth working for the summer in the USA,” she said.

The kind of money to be made on Nantucket stunned Carla Nordby, who came here 10 years ago from New Zealand to work as a chambermaid. While a senior in college, Nordby decided on a whim to apply for a job advertised in the classified section of her local newspaper.

She and nine other Kiwis worked that summer for Bob and Carolyn Taylor at The Quaker House and the Pineapple Inn. The Taylors arranged for her visa, and she arrived on Nantucket in June, her first time in America.

She returned in 1997 and worked in retail, but it wasn’t until she got a restaurant job bussing tables that she understood how lucrative working on Nantucket could be.

“I was such a country hick. I didn’t realize all the opportunities that are here to make really great money. And especially coming from a country like New Zealand where we don’t tip, the whole tipping in bars and restaurants thing here is just bizarre to me,” she said.

“It was a real turning point for me making the transition from a $15 an hour retail job to getting a bussing job to being a waitress and then bartending. Now I’m in a whole different realm altogether,” Nordby said. She now tends the bar at 21 Federal.

Although she has become self-sufficient here, Nordby struggles with whether or not to stay. “ Nantucket was always going to just be one more year for me. But ten years later, can I really call this home? I don’t know. New Zealand doesn’t feel like home anymore, but it’s a safe place to return to if I need to.”

“It’s perplexing; I really would like to have some roots,” Nordby continued. “ Nantucket is my gold standard for adult living. I am really spoiled. I don’t have to work a nine-to-five job if I don’t want to. I can work twenty hours a week, or I can work a hundred hours a week. Housing is always an issue and we are a bit money-driven, but I have been pleasantly surprised by Nantucket. There is an incredible dichotomy in every aspect of living and working here,” she said.

Open to interpretation

Kathryn Kennedy took a job at Nantucket Cottage Hospital two years ago as a health care advocate, but quickly found her niche as a Spanish medical interpreter. Federal law requires hospitals to provide an interpreter to non-English speaking patients. Most of the time the Cottage Hospital uses a telephone service offered 24 hours a day in any language. But for Spanish-speaking patients, they rely on a group of seven paid interpreters who live on Nantucket.

“Every day is different, but I work a lot with pregnant women. I go through the whole process with them: doctor visits every month, then every week and then the delivery and the post-delivery visits. Of course, I get to know everybody in the family. They start to come to me with questions and problems that aren’t medical. After months and months of doing this, you really start to feel like one of the family. I feel really personally attached to lots of families on the island,” Kennedy said.

Ives at St. Paul’s added: “We’re in relationships now; it’s not just about jobs. A lot of these people have been here for ten to fourteen years. We know them and they know us.”

St Paul’s and the Congregational Church on Centre Street loan their churches to New Life Ministries International, a Pentecostal church run by Nantucketer Gail Holdgate and a Jamaican man, the Reverend Donovan Kerr. St. Mary’s Catholic Church on Federal Street also offers a Mass in Spanish.

Pentecostal services are quite common in Jamaica, and the largest segment of the local parish is Jamaican. In the summer, they meet three to four times a week for services or Bible studies, according to Ives.

Each spring, Ives and other island clergy also receive many requests for assistance from the Food Pantry for people who arrive here with little or no money left after their travel costs. “Spring always brings a lot of requests,” Ives noted. “I do think businesses have a moral responsibility to help the people they bring up here. These places are about to rake in the money off the backs of these folks. Why aren’t they feeding them if they need it?”

On the other hand, Ives thinks most employers are good about making sure their workers have adequate housing and compensation. Three years ago, the local office of the Department of Health and Human Services called in the Labor Department to clamp down on a few local businesses that it felt were exploiting their foreign-based workers. Ives noticed that the problems were fixed quickly and have not recurred.

As for the many who are here working for cash without legal paperwork, enforcement agencies seem to look the other way, according to Ives. “If they do get arrested or get in trouble, then that’s the end. But as long as they don’t fall… then there’s kind of a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ thing that goes on,” he said.

Like the churches and Ursula Nazareth at the Brazil Mini Mart, many turn to Meckler at the Nantucket Community School for assistance. “I like the fact that they feel there’s somewhere they can go to get help,” Meckler said.

Through the Community Network for Children, Meckler helps foreign families get financial assistance for daycare and after-school programs. The Community School also builds some of their multi-cultural programs around food, with international dinners and cooking classes, including a popular Pad Thai class taught by a local Thai woman. In the summer, El Salvadorian women cook lunch each day in the high school’s kitchen, with the lunch hour open to anyone interested in getting a little taste of El Salvador.

Making a home

As the Community School’s Adult Education Coordinator and Literacy Director, Meckler provides the means for these sometimes-overlooked members of the Nantucket community to survive and thrive. Although it’s her job, she also makes it her personal mission. Of her students, Meckler said the education and language skills of people who come from European countries are usually good enough for them to enter Nantucket’s social and economic strata at a higher level than Spanish-speaking people, who sometimes don’t read or write in their native language, let alone in English.

“I would be very happy to see El Salvadorian people make it through the ranks here. It is starting to happen,” Meckler noted. “There are a lot of people who have saved and saved, and now they are buying houses. Both the husband and the wife work ninety-hour weeks, [so] you never see them out. They either send their money to family back in El Salvador or they are saving to buy property.”
“Buying a house here is an investment in their future and in their children’s future,” Meckler continued. “Everyone knows that property here is just a great investment. Most feel that the sacrifice is worth it. They say, ‘If I’m going to work all these hours at these jobs, then I want to come out with something of value in the end.’”

By Andrew Spencer

“Back when I worked at The Chicken Box, it was licensed as a restaurant,” Keane recalled recently. “And there was a hotdog steamer at the back of the bar. So that was my staple for the winter.” Since those early days of scraping by, Keane has achieved one of the local personal and business success stories.

Things have certainly changed for the 38-year-old Irish native. He’s no longer carrying cases of beer around The Box, and he’s able to eat more substantial fare these days. Since moving from Ireland to New York and then on to Nantucket, Keane has become a perfect example of the benefits one can realize by working hard. After leaving his job at the Chicken Box in 1999, he opened the Hen House restaurant soon after, followed by Queequeg’s in 2000. His most recent business venture is Kitty Murtagh’s on West Creek Road, an Irish-themed restaurant and bar named after his grandmother. The establishment has quickly become one of Nantucket’s most popular watering holes and eateries for a full spectrum of island diners.

Pluck of the Irish

“Family is very important to me,” Keane said while explaining the restaurant’s name. As a child, Keane grew up in Skerries, an Irish summer resort town much like Nantucket. During his parents’ busy summer seasons, he was routinely shipped off to see “Grammy” in Dublin for two weeks at a time. “She could make a meal out of a bone and a jug of water,” he reminisced. Although the meals andportions at Kitty’s are more filling and creative, Keane’s own work ethic mirrors his grandmother’s resourcefulness.

Moving halfway around the world is a daunting prospect for anyone, especially someone just six months removed from high school graduation and without much money. Pointing to the deep recession in Ireland at the time he emigrated, Keane said that out of 185 students in his graduating class, 180 of them came to the United States in search of work. Because of the economic woes that gripped his homeland then—work of any kind was hard to come by and wages were extremely low—Keane realized that by coming to the United States, he could better his lot: “You get rewarded for working hard in the U.S.”

With the U.S. once a popular destination for thousands of youthful Celts who left their home to seek work, young Irish men and women starting out in similar circumstances were once prevalent on Nantucket. Like Keane, at least 300 Irish nationals had made Nantucket their year-round home by the end of the last century, according to Fran Karttunen, a local ethnologist studying patterns of immigration to the island.

That surge has since slowed, according to Karttunen. “As the year 2000 approached, the Irish economy began an expansion that was dubbed the ‘Celtic tiger,’ and… the Irish presence once again receded on Nantucket,” she writes in her forthcoming book “The Other Islanders: People Who Pulled Nantucket’s Oars.”

“When I first got to the States, I had 300 dollars in my pocket and I had a credit card that had a $500 limit on it. That’s it,” Keane recalled. Many visitors to New York City, Keane’s first port of call in the United States, know that 800 dollars doesn’t go far there. After tending bar for a year, he moved to Nantucket and began work at the Easy Street Café two nights a week. Within a month, he was tending the bar there every night of the week. The following season found him at The Box, feasting on those hotdogs and making it a personal financial goal to save 30-percent of his weekly wages.

Hard work and skill

At the Chicken Box, Keane met Robert Reed, affectionately known as “Cap’n Seaweed,” the former proprietor of the Box. Keane credits Reed with teaching him a lot about the restaurant profession. “Seaweed taught me to be very careful in business,” he said.

And Seaweed reciprocates the compliments. “Right away we identified John as a very willing worker,” he recalled of Keane’s first days at The Box. “It was quite apparent to all of us that he had tremendous skills in hospitality-related industries.” Reed is far from surprised at Keane’s successes so far in the business world. “I always knew that John wasn’t anybody that was going to stay working for someone else forever.”

Concurrent with his growing restaurant concerns, Keane launched into building and home property development in 1977. Although inexperienced in the field, Keane said, “I just decided to do it; I learned a lot on the job.” His earliest projects involved paving, home construction and relocating the old ‘Sconset radio building that housed the first trans-Atlantic radio station in America. Despite the demands of his restaurants, he still works as a subcontractor, with two commercial and residential buildings slated for construction.

The Nantucket business community has clearly embraced Keane as a member in good standing. Kate O’Connor, owner with her husband John of the Atlantic Café and Cap’n Tobey’s, said of Keane, “I’m really impressed by him. He looks at what others call obstacles and sees them as opportunity.”

And it’s not just his fellow business owners who are quick to sing Keane’s praises. Susan O’Meara has known Keane for 10 years, working for him for the last two at Kitty Murtagh’s. “John will do whatever it takes to help people out,” she offered. “I love working for him because he’s such a hard worker,” she said. “People around him see how hard he works and they rise to his level. He’s down there doing the nitty-gritty work with you.”

All the accolades and personal accomplishments notwithstanding, Keane is certainly not a solo act. His wife Caroline joins him in all aspects of his business ventures. And Keane happily shared the credit with her: “She works just as hard as I do,” he said. Together the pair has already begun a new “project,” a title Keane used in good-natured reference to his daughter Emma, born February 19 of this year. “It’s the most amazing thing,” he said simply of parenthood while flashing the telltale grin of a proud new father. “It changes your life a hell of a lot.”

Emma can probably bet on Keane’s good paternal instincts. Every year, Keane gets calls from would-be workers and their parents seeking leads on jobs and housing on Nantucket. He then serves as a liaison for many young Irish workers who come to the island. “We’re a very tight-knit community,” said Keane of the local Irish population. To that end, Keane works to pair up Irish seasonal workers with Nantucket employers, without hesitation or thought given to what he might get in return. “Somebody helped me out when I got here, so I try to help out other people that come,” he explained.

“By perseverance, the snail reached the Ark,” quipped Charles Spurgeon, a 19th-century English theologian. It’s a healthy dose of hard work and determination—coupled with the perseverance of the snail fleeing the Biblical flood—that got Keane where he is today.

And hotdogs. Lots of hotdogs.

By William Ferrall

Few of us who gathered for the Lane’s End Stakes thoroughbred race on March 26 had any idea of which horse was which. But we knew that this so-called “tin-roof circuit” race would be a preview and qualifier—or a killer of dreams—for horses dashing toward this year’s Kentucky Derby on May 7.

Derby fever struck most who answered invitations to the brand new home and office of Nantucket’s only independent veterinarian, Doctor Sherry Holt. A fired-up construction crew outside her house finished smoothing out Holt’s gravel driveway just moments before the 4:00 party call, and just 90 minutes ahead of the 5:30 Lane’s End Stakes post time at Turfway Park in Florence, Kentucky.

Partygoers met their call to the gate as well. Several of the women draped themselves in bright spring ensembles and perched showy chapeaus atop their fashionable hairdos. A few of their mates donned dapper duds. Red and white roses sprouted from vases in honor of the upcoming “Run for the Roses” Kentucky Derby, one of the premier events of the U.S. horseracing season.

Inside Holt’s spacious and lofty great room, Cinco’s executive chef Jason Carroll and his assistant Jonathon Edge had spread out a Nantucket version of traditional Kentucky delights: an artichoke and cheese dip, bite-sized open sandwiches of turkey breast topped with melted Parmesan, stacked roast beef with sour cream and chives sauce and a delicious spring-like yellow corn and cheese pudding. A slow-cooked stew known as “Kentucky chicken burgoo,” which requires days of preparation, threw off steam from a hot plate. A cured, southern-style ham from Cowboy’s Meat Market and Deli on Nantucket served as a visual feast with its bone in, glistening in a brown sugar glaze and sliced into eye-grabbing slabs.

Rich, comforting desserts from Carroll included spiked, heady-flavored Bourbon balls, delightfully chewy Kentucky Derby chocolate and pecan pie. Milk chocolate wafers depicted horse racing themes. For the impossibly chocolate-impaired, Nantucket Nancy’s Chocolate Chip Meltdowns, from the kitchen of local chefs and gourmands Nancy Cook and Richard Schaffer, made for wonderfully pocketable sweet snacks for the road.

At a nearby pouring station, guests helped themselves to mint juleps—a thick simple syrup muddled with ice and mint in traditional mint julep cups of sterling and silver plate—with a jigger or two of Kentucky Bourbon added. By the time long-shot winner Flower Alley had crossed the finish line first in Kentucky, back here on Nantucket we had our party legs in shape for May’s feature race.